


Family

by mad_martha



Series: Auror [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-21
Updated: 2011-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:57:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry pays a last visit to the Dursleys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was intended to become a section of One Week In The Summer. Unfortunately it didn't really fit in the timeline, but I still quite liked what was going on in it so I thought I'd tidy it up and post it as a cookie, just for the interest value.

"So, did you pass?" Ron demanded.

Harry held up his Apparition certificate, grinning, and his friend gave him a celebratory punch on the arm.

"Of _course_ he passed!" Hermione scolded, but she bestowed a kiss on Harry's cheek. "Well done, Harry. Now, let's have lunch. Where's Sirius?"

Harry's godfather having been dragged away from his flirtation with the woman at reception, they headed for the Leaky Cauldron where Harry was treated to a celebratory lunch. Lupin joined them and it became quite convivial, or as convivial as it could be considering that three of the participants had to go back to work afterwards and couldn't drink.

During the scramble afterwards to pay, use the facilities and find belongings, Harry found a moment to draw Lupin quietly to one side.

"Um … Remus? Can I ask a favour?"

"Of course," the older man said once.

"I …." Harry hesitated, then said rather nervously, "I have to visit the Dursleys tomorrow. To collect the last of my things. It's not much, but - I was wondering if you'd mind going with me?"

Lupin looked at him for a moment, but to his surprise merely said, "Of course not. I know Sirius is meeting Dumbledore at the Ministry mid-afternoon, so we'll go then, shall we?"

"Yes. Thank you," Harry said gratefully. Remus _had_ understood. He'd thought he might; Harry loved Sirius but he didn't really trust him around his Muggle relatives and much as he disliked them, he didn't want any fuss during this visit. He wanted to go, get his things, and leave. But he also didn't want to go alone; there was something in particular that he needed to retrieve and he felt sure that if he went on his own his uncle would make things difficult. Having someone like Remus there would hopefully forestall that.

Sirius seemed to take forever to leave the house the following day, but when he finally stepped into the Floo, Lupin closed it behind him and raised his brows at Harry, who was fidgeting on the couch with a magazine.

"Shall we go?"

They dispensed with robes and instead dressed in Muggle-style jeans, shirts and jackets, which was almost a relief in the summer heat. Lupin had an unusually wide range of Muggle clothing for a wizard, which he explained quite simply: "After your parents died and Sirius was sent to Azkaban, it was nearly impossible for me to find paid work as a wizard and even when I did, I wasn't able to open an account with Gringotts. It was easier to live an almost exclusively Muggle lifestyle."

They Apparated to a stand of bushes in Magnolia Crescent and set off down the road to Privet Drive. It was one of those quiet, sleepy summer afternoons; the only noise was the gentle hiss of lawn sprinklers in a couple of gardens.

Harry was half afraid that his relatives would be out or even away on holiday; he didn't have a key to the house, and while that wasn't a problem for him as a wizard, he didn't relish the idea of 'breaking in' to collect his things. But his uncle's car was in the driveway when they approached number four and several of the windows were open. Not that this evidence of habitation made Harry feel any easier.

They walked up the garden path and Harry rang the bell. His stomach was in knots, but Lupin looked a picture of calm as he dug his hands into his jeans pockets and casually surveyed the immaculate flowerbeds.

"Good-sized Rhododendrons," he observed approvingly.

The door opened - Harry heard a gasp - and it was slammed shut again. Almost. Harry had been expecting something like this and instead the door smacked painfully against his right hand. There was a brief struggle between him and his aunt.

"Don't be ridiculous, Petunia!" Lupin said in an exasperated tone. "We were _trying_ to be considerate by ringing the bell, but if you insist we'll open the door our way and you can explain it to your neighbours later."

The door reluctantly opened and Harry received the full blast of his aunt's glare.

"What do you want?" she demanded in an outraged hiss. "We were finished with you over a year ago! You've no business coming back here and - "

"I've come to collect the last of my stuff," Harry interrupted her. " _Please_ , Aunt Petunia. I'll just get my stuff and that'll be it."

"There's nothing of yours left here!"

"Yes, there _is_. There's one quite important thing of mine here. And I left some bits up in my room."

"You might want to let us in," Lupin added dryly. "People might talk."

That suggestion was enough. Aunt Petunia opened the door just wide enough to let them slip inside, and shut it again quickly behind them … but not without a furtive look up and down the street, Harry noticed.

"Now what do you want?" she demanded in a more normal tone.

"I need my birth certificate," he told her. He saw Lupin's brows go up in sudden enlightenment.

"We don't have it," his aunt snapped, folding her arms across her chest.

Harry was starting to feel annoyed. "Yes, you _do_. Uncle Vernon has it somewhere. He had to have it to enrol me at school, and I know my godfather didn't ask him for it when he came to take me away. I'm going to need it and a copy isn't good enough."

She glared at him for a moment as if disputing the claim, but then she turned on her heel and marched through to the living room.

"Vernon!" Harry heard her say sharply. " _He's_ here. The boy. He wants his birth certificate or some such nonsense …."

Lupin looked at Harry. "The Ministry could issue you with a copy of your magical birth certificate, you know."

"They won't. I've tried," Harry replied, frustrated. "Because it's _me_ they won't even let me see the entry on the register without something like my Muggle certificate to prove who I am. Apparently people are always trying to get copies of my birth certificate - God only knows why."

"In that case, I think I'm impressed. I had no idea security was so good at the Ministry." Lupin tilted his head, listening. A _sotto voce_ argument was going on in the living room. "Why don't you go and get your other things, Harry? I'll keep stag here."

Harry nodded and quickly climbed the stairs. The house had been redecorated since he left - no surprises there, his uncle and aunt redecorated every two years anyway - but the layout of rooms appeared to be much the same. He went straight past the master bedroom and guest room, and in the process passed his cousin Dudley's open door. Harry had barely put his hand on the latch of his old room before his cousin's impressive bulk was looming up behind him.

"What do you want?" Dudley demanded.

Harry glanced up at him; he had to, for he was barely five foot seven himself and Dudley now rivalled Ron in height. Two years had actually slimmed the other youth down a little, so that his bulk combined with his height now made him look merely stocky. He still had the habit of standing intimidatingly close, though, and Harry fought the urge to take a step back. Dudley was in no position to bully him now.

"I've come to collect my stuff," he said, and he pushed the door to his old bedroom open. It had been redecorated in there too, only rather more sketchily, and the room had reverted to its original use as a dumping ground for Dudley's rubbish.

"There's nothing of yours here," Dudley grunted. "Mum chucked anything you left in the dustbin," he added maliciously.

"Probably," Harry agreed mildly.

The bed was still in its original position, he noted, and covered with a dustsheet. On top of that was what looked like a hundredweight of discarded magazines. He got down on his knees and crawled underneath. The loose floorboard was still there and coated in enough dust that he guessed it had not been interfered with. When he levered it up (with a sneeze or two) and felt inside, the rough hemp bag was still there. He dragged it out and put the floorboard back.

Annoyance was warring with curiosity on Dudley's face. Harry glanced at him and decided to see if he couldn't at least keep things cordial.

"So, what are you planning to do now, Dud?" he asked, as he untied the neck of the bag. "You know, now you've left school?"

Curiosity was apparently winning, for Dudley visibly weighed up his options and decided to respond in kind. "University," he said, eyeing the bag. "Engineering. Why, what are you doing? Learning card tricks and how to cut people in locked boxes in half?"

That was actually quite a friendly remark for his cousin and Harry decided a grin would be an appropriate response.

"Nah, been there, done that. I start my training as an Auror on Monday."

He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a lumpy paper packet. Incredibly, it was two of Mrs. Weasley's mince pies, still 'fresh' thanks to one of her preserving charms. Not that Harry fancied them; he put them back and dug around again.

Dudley eyed him uneasily. "What's an Auror?"

Tricky question; what was the nearest Muggle equivalent? Harry pondered as he pulled out a fat book. It was his original copy of _Hogwarts: A History_. He'd been sure he'd simply lost it.

"It's a bit like the Police," he said, "only more like Special Branch than the regulars. We go after Dark wizards."

Dudley looked disbelieving. "Yeah, right. Don't they have universities, then?"

"Not really. Wizards mostly train on apprenticeships." And Harry would dearly liked to have known how Dudley, who had always been a lousy scholar, had managed to get into university. Although he seemed to recall his aunt and uncle talking about hiring tutors to bring him up to standard, shortly before Sirius had come to take Harry away the previous year.

Another book emerged from the bag, _One Thousand Magical Plants And Fungi_ , closely followed by his old chess set. Some of the pieces looked pretty indignant when he opened the box, but they didn't dare say anything with Dudley looming over them. There was also a rather squashed Chocolate Frog and a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans with only a few of the more suspiciously coloured ones rattling at the bottom.

That seemed to be it … oh wait, there was one more thing at the bottom of the bag. Harry fished it out and was surprised to find that it was a photograph of Cho Chang wearing Ravenclaw Quidditch gear and holding her broom. When he turned it over, Harry was unsurprised to discover a note on the back in Colin Creevey's handwriting: _Something for you to drool over during the holiday!_

Harry grinned in spite of himself and when he turned it over again, the Cho in the picture smiled and winked flirtily at him.

A shadow fell across the photo. "Phoar!" Dudley said, leering. "She's a bit tasty!"

Much to Harry's amusement, photo-Cho reacted with horror, hopping onto her broom and flying away out of the picture.

"Hey, where did she go?" demanded Dudley, and a certain amount of fear warred with surprise on his round face.

"Wizard pictures move," Harry explained. He tucked the photograph into the back pocket of his jeans. "If the person in them gets bored or doesn't like the look of you, they can just walk out of the picture. Sometimes they talk as well." Although none of the photographs in Harry's possession ever had; he didn't know why.

"So who is she?"

"My ex-girlfriend." Harry crouched down to check under the bed one more time. Nope, that seemed to be everything.

"You? A girlfriend? And one that looks like that?" Dudley sniggered. "Yeah, right! How much did you pay her? Oh wait - you don't have any money, do you?"

Harry managed to resist the twin impulses to ask his cousin when the last time was that _he'd_ had a girlfriend he didn't have to pay and to tell him that actually he had quite a lot of money. Then he was forced to batter down an even worse impulse to tell Dudley that he'd moved on from girls now and had a boyfriend instead. That would be a _really_ bad idea.

"Give it a rest, Dud," he said instead, and he began to stuff the books and other items back into the bag. "Right, that's everything I think …."

Dudley followed him back out of the room and down the stairs, to where Lupin was still standing in the hallway. The older man was now confronting both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon; his manner was as mild and polite as ever, but Harry recognised the look in his eyes when they flicked up to meet his briefly. If he had been Sirius the hexes would have been flying by now.

"I already told you; as soon as you hand over Harry's birth certificate, we'll leave you in peace," he was saying. "I can't imagine why you're making such a fuss about it, to be honest. What possible use could it be to you?"

"And I told you we don't _have_ any birth certificate for him!" Uncle Vernon blustered. "That - that godfather of his must have it - "

"I spoke to Sirius last night. He's quite certain you never gave him any documentation of Harry's when we collected him last year. We even went through his papers, just to be sure." Lupin paused. "Of course, if it's missing the authorities will have to be alerted - ours as well as yours. The Ministry of Magic takes such matters very seriously."

These words worked better than most charms Professor Flitwick had taught Harry at school. His aunt let out a tiny moan and Uncle Vernon turned a very strange colour.

"I'll look again," he grunted and he lumbered back into the living room.

When Lupin looked at Harry again, there was a spark of rather grim humour in his eyes. "Got everything, Harry?"

"Yep." He displayed the bag. "Not much, but I didn't want to leave it here."

"Certainly not. It's never a good idea to leave magical items in a non-magical household." Harry got the impression that Lupin was saying this for Aunt Petunia's benefit. "It can cause all sorts of problems, as I'm sure your aunt would agree."

She made a disagreeable sound, eyeing Harry resentfully, but didn't say anything.

In a surprisingly short space of time, Uncle Vernon reappeared clutching a folded piece of paper. "There!" he exclaimed, thrusting it at Lupin. "Now get out of our house and don't come back!"

Lupin took a moment to check the certificate, though, before nodding to the Dursleys. "That looks fine. Thank you. Harry?"

Harry suddenly felt very odd. This wasn't like last year, when he'd been desperate to leave and hadn't even bothered taking a look back as he jumped into the car Sirius had borrowed to collect him. This felt rather more permanent, as though he would never see his relatives again.

"Well … bye then," he said awkwardly. "Thanks for … thanks for everything." Why the hell was he thanking them, after fifteen years of abuse? He turned quickly to Dudley, who was still standing halfway up the stairs. "Good luck at university, Dud."

When none of them said anything, he turned and followed Lupin out of the door.

xXx

"I must be nuts," he said when they were halfway down Privet Drive. "Why did I say that?"

"Because they _are_ your family," Lupin told him. "You can't choose them, but they're still family."

"It just seems weird that I'm never going to see them again," Harry remarked.

"I wouldn't say that - "never" is a long time." Lupin handed him his birth certificate. "This is yours I believe."

Harry unfolded it. Another strange moment; for the first time he set eyes on his father's signature, a curved and elaborate "James Potter" that was utterly unlike his own untidy scrawl. He gave his occupation as "Civil Servant", but Harry wasn't sure if that was literal or just the nearest Muggle equivalent. He had been told that his father worked for the Ministry but not any details. His mother was listed, incredibly, as "housewife". That sounded rather unlikely, given what he knew of her.

And that was it. Apart from the bald details of Harry's birth (he had been a home birth), it was little more than a form with names. Really, Harry thought, there was nothing like official paperwork to put you in your place. Not that a Muggle form would have a "Fearsome Bane Of Voldemort?" box to be ticked anyway. He re-folded the certificate and tucked it carefully away inside his jacket pocket.

"What I don't understand," he said suddenly, "was why my uncle was so reluctant to let me have it. What could he want with it?"

"He could sell it," Lupin suggested cynically. "Birth certificates are valuable – you can get all sorts of things with them. A new identity, for example. That's probably why the Ministry is guarding yours so carefully, although as I said, it's unlike them to be quite so foresighted. Probably Dumbledore had a word with them."

"Probably," Harry echoed, but suddenly he no longer cared. He had his certificate, that was all that mattered, and now he would be able to get a copy of the magical one. And on Monday, with all his documentation in his possession, he would start his new job ... and a new life.

Whatever that meant.


End file.
